Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real (vol. 2)

Pretty

This is a picture of my bathroom after the 2nd coat of paint.  I'm really happy with the way it is looking, but am a little worried that the paint is still tacky a week after the second coat.  I actually tried to remove to tape around the edges today, and took some of the paint with it.  I've never lived in a very humid part of the world before, so I'm not even sure how to go about accelerating the process of having the paint dry.  

This last week has made the term "watching paint dry" MUCH more real to me.

And this is a picture of all of my books and CDs.  One of the blessings about moving is that it gives you license to pare down.  In anticipation, my sister turned me on to the book, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Maria Kondo, and it has helped me immensely in the process of finding what is essential for me.  While she is anthropomorphizes everthing, her question, "does this item spark joy?" makes a lot of sense to me, and has made choosing what to keep and what to get rid of much much easier.

Happy

This is what pictures of my animals generally look like when I try to take them with the flash on.  Rather than red eye, they look like they are part robot, or something that would come out of a science fiction movie.  It makes me smile every time, and Destructodog becomes Robodog. 

Just chillin' on the couch. No room for you, mom.

 And this is what happens when the digdogs chase the cats...my bed goes all askew.  When I moved the mattress back, my kitty was sitting underneath the overhang of the mattress, thankful for a new place to hide. I don't currently have a bed frame, but should probably get one just so that she has a safe place to get away from the digdogs. That would require needing to dust under there, though.

I'm still working on unpacking my bedroom. It is the only room, other than the Bathroom that isn't set up yet.

Funny

How is this even a thing, and I never new about it?  What is this, you ask?  It is catnip infused bubbles to play with your cat with.  At $0.97, I couldn't resist buying a bottle.  My cat pretty much ignored the bubbles, but sniffed, mildly curious, at the ground where the bubbles burst.  My niece's cat laid down on the floor where they burst and writhed in the hopes of soaking up every drop.  She is afraid of the bubbles themselves, though, as one popped on her nose. A half hour of amusement that was well worth the 97 cents.  

Real

One of the things that happened last week is that my priest came over to bless my new house.  When he got there, he says, "you must really like yellow."  Yellow is a happy color for me, but not really what I would call a favorite color--that would be green or purple.  However, as you can see from the photo, I currently have both a yellow car and a yellow house.  I didn't do it on purpose, but there you have it.

I plan to make a house tour video at some point, but need to finish moving in first.

In the process of having my house blessed, Father gave me another Crucifix.  I had a hard time figuring out where to hang it, since I already have a very big one in my living room, and my confirmation crucifix in my bedroom.  It ended up in my kitchen.  Not a bad choice, since the corpus matches the wall color nicely.

Join the roundup at Like Mother, Like Daughter

Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real (Vol. 1)

I read Like Mother, Like Daughter on a regular basis...I love the practical advice and the beauty of the pictures, etc. that are posted on their blog.  Since I'm trying to get back into the swing of blogging and I love their blog, I'm going to try to join their weekly Thursday feature, Pretty, Happy, Funny, Real for a while.  Go check them out and see for yourself! Besides, it will get me into the habit of taking pictures on a regular basis again, since I tend to forget that there is even a camera feature on my phone most of the time!

Pretty

Flowers from around campus

One thing that I'm really in awe about here in the eastern part of TX is the amount of flowers that are around.  It isn't that there weren't pretty flowers back in El Paso, but the colors tended to be less vibrant unless there had been a lot of rain.  Here, we have LOTS of rain, dew, and precipitation in general, so the greens are greener and the colors are deeper.  It has been a feast to the eyes for me, but also is making for a lot of allergy issues.  If I forget to take my allergy medicine, I usually end up with a killer sinus headache by the end of the day.

My parish from the choir loft around sunset

 One thing that I've begun doing is to sing with one of my parish's many choirs.  We meet in the choir loft, and the parish has an East-West orientation.  Once the time changed, it made for this particular photo opportunity. I'm a little sad that we only have 2 weeks until we break for summer.  Since about 75% of the choir are college students (and our choir director is one of the music faculty at A &M), we wouldn't have enough to sing in the summer if we wanted to. Still, I'm going to miss it.

Happy

So, as promised, here are some pictures of the house I'm buying.  It is a cute little house built in 1940, and is 2 bedrooms/one bath (~950 sq. ft).

I really don't like the vinyl tiles that they put on the bottom half of the wall here. 

 This will be my first project, removing the vinyl tiles and replacing them with something else.  I'd just remove and paint the whole wall, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to remove the moulding that cuts the wall in half. Part of me likes the idea of putting tile there, although paint might be quicker.  I've also been toying with the idea of painting the bottom half of the wall a different color than the top half. The problem is that, when I peeked underneath the tiles, it looks like there was once wallpaper there, and I'm not sure how easy it is to paint after removing wallpaper.

The bathroom from in front of the tub.

The living room with the original hardwood floors. I need to find someone to make some more shelves for the built in bookcase.

Another view of the Living room.
I love these hardwood floors!

The kitchen. The door here goes to the backyard. I plan to paint in here before moving in as well. I plan to put a table where the refrigerator is currently.  

So, I measured the area, and I will just barely have room to place the fridge beside the stove on this side of the kitchen.  It means that there will only be about 1.5 feet between the stove and the counter, but it is the only way I will have enough space for a table and chairs.  The 2 bottom corner cabinets will not be as accessible as I'd like, but that is worth it if I can have a table again.  That corner will be used for small appliances, so I won't really be losing out on counter space.

The front bedroom. It gets all the sunshine in the afternoon.

The back bedroom. I'm hoping that it gets sunlight in the morning...I don't know because I've never been there before noon.

View from my  (the back) bedroom toward the living room. There really isn't any wasted space in here! 

Funny

My niece has to work sometimes on the weekends, and I'm in the house with both her and my animals.  So, I will sometimes send her pictures of her dog to cheer her up...These are my most recent attempts, in which the first catches us a bit off-guard.

Taking selfies with dogs is HARD, and I hate being licked!

And when you get the dog to sit still long enough, they are often a bit annoyed with the whole process!

Real

I've been working on this quilt for my niece for a very, very long time (I think "working" is probably much too strong a word--I have had the project in my closet, accusing me of slacking, is more accurate).  So, I promised my niece to have it done for her birthday this year, with the full intention of using Spring Break to marathon quilt and git 'er done.  That didn't happen, so the quilt is still not finished, although I'm a little bit closer than I was at the beginning of March.  At this point, the goal is to have it completely done by Christmas.  As long as I can keep the momentum going, that is actually doable.  I've had to take a bit of a break to get caught up on grading, but this weekend will see me working on it further.  I will post more pics as I continue to work on it.

And so it begins...

Life has gotten in the way of posting very much here, but I've been wanting to pick up blogging again.  Since I've actually begun planning my next Camino, it seemed like a good time to re-start writing.

At this point, the plan is that I will be back on the Camino in July/August of 2016--at a little over a year until I go, it seemed appropriate to start the planning.  In some ways, I feel like the planning will go a little bit easier, since I have a really good idea of what I should and should not bring.  In some ways, I feel like the planning will actually be harder, since I need to keep my feet into account.  They are still bothering me, which means that it might take me longer to get to Santiago, that I might have to send my backpack forward, that I may have to take more rest days along the way, or some combination of the above.  It might also mean that I will need to bring KT tape with me for my feet.  The extra weight of having to do that is not something I relish, but if I'm sending my pack on each day, it won't be all that terrible.

I actually knew that it was about time to begin planning for my next Camino when I started thinking about being on the trail every time I passed this old gas station here in town....It has some spray-painted yellow arrows on the pumps, and it reminds me of the trail markers that are ubiquitous on the Camino.

Of course, that isn't the only new adventures that I'm in the process of.  I've made an offer on a house, and, assuming everything goes well, I will be closing on June 2.  I'm not looking forward to moving, but I am looking forward to having my own space and to be able to decorate any way I want to without worrying I'll lose my deposit over it!  We are doing the inspections today, and I will take pictures while I'm there.  I'm hoping to make it my Refuge, and already have a few things I want to do to make it better.  It will be a long process, though, so I'm not planning to do everything all at once.  It has to pass the inspections and the appraisal first, though!

With a June 2 closing date, it also means that we will have about 2 months to move and get the apartment cleaned/fixed up.  Because of our critters, we will need to replace some of the blinds and pick up the dog doo, not to mention clean deeply and maybe put down new contact paper in the cabinets.  I'm really starting to get excited, and it is fun to plan/get ready for the next step!

Annulled. Now What?

One of the hazards of moving is that, when you give your new address to others, they might write it down wrong or miss part of it.  This happened at the Tribunal office, and I first learned of this when they called me today to let me know that my Annulment has finally come through...the letter they sent was returned because they forgot to add my apartment number.  So, I'm not sure how long it has been that my marriage was Annulled, but it has been and I'm free--free to marry or enter a religious order, free to move on.

Proof that all of Bryan/College Station are Aggie-Crazy.  This truly is a "thing."

I have mixed feelings about this....Based on what the tribunal told me back when I got the first instance, I didn't expect to hear from them for another year.  Maybe I should have, since I've been praying for it to come through daily since I turned in the paperwork.  It isn't that I don't think prayer works...it is just that I figured that the backlog the tribunal told me about would preclude it from getting here any time before the 2 year mark.

A selfie with my sister-in-law over Christmas. While I was there, I realized that Bryan/College Station is truly becoming my home. 

It is kind of like the shifting of sand underneath your feet as you walk down a sand dune--you have to be careful of your balance or you will end up landing on your butt.  I can now start dating, or pursuing a religious vocation.  I can consider myself to be truly free, but the next step is unclear to me.  I think it is time to spend some time in Adoration before I go much further, and let the sand settle beneath me before I take the next step, whatever that is.

Whenever I think of sand dunes, I think of these--Taken at White Sands National Monument

I'm just thankful that I CAN move forward.  This is definitely a blessing for this new year.

The picture is fuzzier than I'd like, but this is my outfit for the second day of the semester.  I've been truly blessed!

Poetry fluff

At my core, I'm a gooey, saccharine, hopeless romantic--I often try to hide it, though (and I'm probably not very good at it--I'm a terrible liar). I am attracted to guys who are rational, linear, analytic thinkers, and, at least in my experience, being a hopeless romantic tends to turn that kind of guy off.  I'm not sure if it is because they perceive romance and sentiment as neediness or if they just see it as unnecessary, but it usually means that I dial my romantic side back when I'm in a relationship.  I'm not ashamed of the fact that there is still a little girl inside of me that wants to be a princess swept off of her feet by a knight in shining armor. I've just grown realistic enough to know that most knights have tarnished and dented armor.  Besides, I am not the kind of girl that needs saving.  As much as I like the idea of a knight in shining armor, I think my parents instilled their daughter with just a little too much of their mid-western independence and ingenuity for me to be a passive princess, and my temperament is just a little too feisty to be resignedly patient.

This is one of the windows on the same floor as my office. Kind of looks like something you might see in a fairy-tale castle, doesn't it?

That being said, the sentiment of the following song appeals to my romantic side, and it captures the wistful hope that many single women have, just as it points to what it means to being open to whatever God has for us.

The longer I'm single, the more I suspect that I will remain so, and I'm good with that--life might not be how I envisioned it when I was in high school and college, but I have a blessed life: A wonderful job, an awesome parish, affectionate fur babies (err, pets), and tons of nieces and nephews to spoil.  It doesn't keep me from dreaming sometimes, though.  And, that is where this particular poem came from.  It is corny, but like the above song, shows a wistful hope for what may or may not happen.

The Dreams of this Hopeless Romantic

To be kissed senseless while held in a dip

To receive flowers for no reason at all

To be serenaded on some moonlit night

These are the dreams of this hopeless romantic

To be asked to pray at the end of each date

To be surprised with an impromptu lunch

To take classes together for ballroom dance

These are the dreams of this hopeless romantic

That he'll hold my hand during everyday moments

That he'll read me poetry for bedtime stories

That he'll cherish me all of our days

These are the dreams of this hopeless romantic

That he'll communicate with just a look

That he'll be deliberately pursue our courtship

That he'll place Christ at the center

These are the dreams of this hopeless romantic

That I'll want to bear his children

That I can help him get to heaven

That I will love him all my days

These are the prayers of this hopeless romantic

_____________________________________________________

When I was younger, I would often separate out my gooey romanticism from my practicality--the older I get, the more I wonder if there is a way to reconcile these two disparate parts of my personality.  Is there such a thing as a practical romantic? If so, that is what I'd like to become.

Saying Goodbye to the Philosopher

I think that I have made a personal record...After 3 months of dating, my relationship with the philosopher has ended.  This is actually the shortest that I have ever dated anyone, with 6 months being the shortest before this.  I think that the amazing thing is that I'm largely ok with this development, in part because I had an inkling that this might happen a couple of weeks ago, and in part because the Lord has given me a lot of peace leading up to this.  I'm still processing it, but I'm at a really good place in my life--I have a job that I love, a parish that is downright awesome, and a new town to learn about and explore.

One of the flowers blooming around campus at my new job.  I look forward to the fall colors.  I also look forward to the spring when more plants will be blooming!

God used the Philosopher to get me out of my comfort zone back home and bring me to here to a better job and and an awesome parish.  I can only be thankful for that.  I don't regret the move, and honestly, I don't regret my behavior during our relationship.  I conducted myself to the best of my ability in a Godly fashion, not without struggle, but with integrity.  I hope that he can say the same.

So, my job for the next few months will be putting down roots where I am, and following where ever the Lord may lead...Right before I came here, I started a new journal, and decided that I needed to make my theme to be "Putting down roots."  I actually had the perfect journal to use for that theme, as well.

My current Journal.

I had already started doing so before the break-up, but now it starts in earnest.  I now have an hour scheduled for weekly Adoration at my parish, and will begin teaching CCD classes this coming Wednesday...I'm co-teaching the 6th grade boys, so please pray for me!!!  I hope to go dancing tonight at the local country-western hot-spot, and am finding my way around pretty well.  I also plan to go for a bike ride just for the fun of it this afternoon--something I haven't done since I was a kid exploring my neighborhood!  Just as I did before I started dating, I plan to enjoy being single--spend time with friends, exercise, work, and grow.  Yes, it can be lonely, but I'm learning that, when you take it to Christ, that loneliness becomes solitude--it is all a matter of perspective.  

This is my favorite Superbowl commercial ever--it seems to best illustrate the following poem!

Tilting at Windmills

Loss of sleep feeds my melancholy

A voracious monster who

Sucks at my marrow with abandon

The unknown will be known

And he is poised for another feast

His utensils gleam, napkin beneath the chin

This outcome might bring sorrow

A slow drip of nectar or a 

Great 10 course dinner--I know not which

One thing is certain: Melancholy's glut

Will be his downfall.

Like an illusion, he transforms

Prayer and gratitude diminish him

And the monster morphs--

Shadows dissipated, he is a pesky mosquito

Defeated with a timely swat.

(sorry this isn't a sonnet--hopefully next week!)

Settling in

So, I have now been in Central TX for a little over 2 weeks, and I'm finally getting settled into the area, although I still use my GPS whenever I want to find something.  Even so, I have found the nearest (nice) laundromat, the nearest Starbucks, how to get to work and home, and the nearest grocery store.  I've also found a really good home parish.  This is their website, and I'm really enjoying the worship, the community, and look forward to getting more involved.  In fact, I have committed to teaching CCD for the 6th grade boys class, so I'm going to need some extra prayers!  It doesn't start for another week and a half, so I will be able to spend some time getting prepared. :-D

The truck as it was originally packed for our trip here. we had to re-do the tarp at the Sunland park exit since it kept coming off.

I'm also in the process of working on my classes: I have seven this semester, so I will be incredibly busy during the week.  I should actually be working on my Argumentation and Debate class right about now, but I'm being a bit of a bum at the moment.  At this point, it is late enough that it will have to wait until tomorrow evening or during my office hours.  I will also be going to the bank and the post office during lunch.  I don't get to start riding my bike regularly to work until Wednesday, it looks like.  I can live with that, but I really want to get into and stay in the habit.

This is the truck after the redo.  It still billowed, but not as bad.  We made it all the way to Ft. Stockton, although the tarp was in tatters.  We had to buy a new one the next day.

I'm not sure what the digdog thinks about all this, although she is much less skittish than she was when we first started packing and then unpacking...she isn't sticking to my side like a limpet anymore, but she still prefers to stay pretty close.  I think that she is worried that I'm going to go away again like I did when I went to Spain.  At the same time, she is really liking the new yard, and she and my niece's dog have been having fun running around in it.  My favorite part about our yard is that there are 2 trees close enough that I will be able to hang a hammock from them come next spring.  I suspect that it will become one of my favorite places to read, assuming that the mosquitoes aren't terrible.  I may need to take out stock in Citronella candles...

The local running store.  I haven't gone there yet when they are open, but I'm hoping that I can find a running group through them.  

 One of the nicest parts about my new job is that I have an office all to myself--no more cubicle-like desk space.  Because of that, I've gone a little overboard in decorating it.  I have even bought a plant, in spite of the fact that I have the black thumb of death.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I can actually keep it alive for the duration.  From what I've read online and from my friends, it is actually a low-maintenance plant.

My office.  I even bought curtains!

My plant.  The mini-posters behind it are from Zen Pencils, and are all quotes by Emerson.

And, today, I unpacked my last box.  I'm officially all settled in, and I'm really thankful for that.  That means that I actually have a place to work from home, as well as that it is restful enough that I will actually be able to focus.  While I was a slob about keeping my room clean growing up, I've found that having a tidy space to work actually helps to keep a person focused.  I still need to do something about an office chair, since my ball doesn't seem to be keeping it's air.  I'm using our one folding chair at the moment, but it isn't very comfortable.  Since I've had my exercise ball for 4 years, it is probably time and past time to replace it.

My wall.  These are dance cards from the late 20's from various high school and college dances, a hat from the 30's-40's, and a fan from the same era.  

My bed.  Fat Cat likes having a clean room, too!

I still have a blank wall in my room, but I'm not sure what to put on that particular wall yet.  I'm hoping that I can find a nice print of art at some point in the near future.  Some of my wall hangings were put in my office, and there were a couple that I had to get rid of because they got damaged in the move.  It is kind of nice, though, as it means I can add to my repertoire of pictures.  I may see if I can find a nice Picasso print, since he is probably one of my favorite artists. 

But the thing is that this city and our apartment is becoming home.  I miss my family, but this was a good move for me, and I look forward to putting down roots.  Next thing you know it, I'm going to start sounding like a Texan with a drawl and everything!